Friday, January 31, 2014

Otis Pike -- and U.S. Intelligence Abuses

These
days it’s the scandal involving widespread surveillance by the National
Security Agency. Four decades ago it was the investigation of U.S.
intelligence agency abuses by a committee chaired by Congressman Otis G. Pike.
The panel’s report, revealing a pattern similar in matters of arrogance and
deception to the disclosures in recent times, was suppressed—scandalously—by
the full House of Representatives.

Pike,
who died last week at 92, was the greatest member of Congress from Long Island I
have known in 52 years as a journalist based on the island. He was simply extraordinary.

He
was able to win, over and over again as a Democrat in a district far more
Republican than it is now. His communications to constituents were a wonder—a
constant flow of personal letters. As a speaker he was magnificent—eloquent and
what a sense of humor! Indeed, each campaign he would write and sing a funny song,
accompanying himself on a ukulele or banjo, about his opponent. He worked
tirelessly and creatively for his eastern Long Island district.

With
his top political lieutenants, attorney Aaron Donner and educator Joseph Quinn, and
his dynamic wife Doris, and his many supporters—including those in Republicans
for Pike—he was a trusted, unique governmental institution on Long Island.

And
he was a man of complete integrity.That,
indeed, was why, after 18 years, Pike decided to close his career in the House
of Representatives.

In
1975, as issues about global U.S. intelligence activities began to surface, Pike
became chair of the House Special Select Committee on Intelligence. A U.S. Marine dive bomber and night fighter
pilot in the Pacific during World War II, who with the war’s end went to
Princeton and became a lawyer, he embarked with his committee, Donner its chief
counsel, into an investigation of the assassinations and coups in which the Central
Intelligence Agency was involved. His panel found systematic, unchecked and
huge financial pay-offs by the CIA to figures around the world. And, yes, it found illegal surveillance.

is an essay by a CIA historian,
Gerald K. Haines, which at its top asserts how “the Pike Committee set about
examining the CIA’s effectiveness and costs to taxpayers. Unfortunately, Pike,
the committee, and its staff never developed a cooperative working relationship
with the Agency...”

A “cooperative working relationship” with the CIA?
Pike’s committee was engaged in a hard-hitting
investigation, a probe by the legislative branch of government, into wrongdoing
by the executive branch. It was not, in examining the activities of the CIA and
the rest of what historian Haines terms the “Intelligence Community,”
interested in allying with and being bamboozled by them.

To
make matters worse, leading components of the media turned away from what the
Pike Committee was doing. Pike told me how James “Scotty” Reston, the powerful
columnist and former executive editor of The
New York Times, telephoned him to complain: “What are you guys doing down there!”The
Times and other major media began focusing on the counterpart and less
aggressive Senate committee on intelligence chaired by Senator Frank Church of
Idaho.

Then,
in 1976, even though a majority of representatives on the Pike Committee voted
to release its report, the full House balloted 246-to-124 not to release it.

What
an attempted cover-up! Fortunately, the report was leaked to CBS reporter
Daniel Schorr who provided it to The
Village Voice which ran it in full.

I
still vividly recall sitting with Pike and talking, over drinks in a tavern in
his hometown of Riverhead, about the situation. He had done what needed to be
done—and then came the suppression. He thought, considering what he
experienced, that he might be more effective as a journalist rather than a
congressman in getting truth out.

I
knew Otis as a reporter and columnist for the daily Long Island Press. Dave Starr, the editor of The Press and national editor of the Newhouse newspaper chain,
always thought the world of Pike. Starr and Pike made an arrangement under
which Pike would write a column distributed by the Newhouse News Service. Pike didn’t
run for re-election for the House of Representatives—and starting in 1979, for
the next 20 years, he was a nationally syndicated columnist.

His
columns were as brilliant as the speeches he gave as a congressman. They were full
of honesty, humor and wisdom—as was the man.

Starr,
still with Newhouse Newspapers, commented last week on Pike’s death: “The
country has lost a
great thinker, a mover and shaker, and a patriot.” Yes.

About Me

I have specialized in doing investigative reporting in a variety of media for more than 45 years. I teach as well as practice journalism. I'm a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury where my courses include Investigative Reporting. My website is at www.karlgrossman.com. For over 20 years I've hosted the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up and have written and presented TV documentaries for EnviroVideo (www.envirovideo.com). I'm the chief investigative reporter for WVVH-TV (www.wvvh.com}. I'm the author of six books including "Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power;" "Power Crazy;" and "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Our Planet." Honors I've received for journalism include the George Polk, Generoso Pope, James Aronson and John Peter Zenger Awards. My weekly column runs in newspapers of the Press Newspaper Group and other papers. I have given presentations in the U.S. and around the world and am represented in lecture appearances by MacRae Speakers & Entertainment(macraespeakers.com).